


the right side of rock bottom

by okaytlyn



Category: Lovelyz, SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: 2jisoo, F/M, im sorry sowon; im sorry irene, janitor joshua yall bet u never saw that comin'!!, sibling!jisoo and dino
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-13 02:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7135598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaytlyn/pseuds/okaytlyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joshua’s at the bottom of the corporate ladder, Jisoo’s at the bottom of the high school food chain. He's not quite sure how they correlate; all he knows is that they were meant to struggle – but not alone. </p>
<p>//where hong jisoo's is the high school janitor, and seo jisoo's the girl he finds crying in the supposedly haunted toilet. //</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ok i promise this is better than it sounds!! (?)  
> idk what's with me and gross occupations man we have sum kind of affinity going on

For the record: no, his parents didn’t die. No, he didn’t fail his college SATs. No, he isn’t in the girls’ bathroom to see anything at all.

He’s just poor, _goddamnit._

Somewhere between falling short of scholarship requirements, having five siblings and visiting his high school homeroom teacher on Staff Day, he gets a job offer. And when you’re saving up towards an impossible mountain-moving task of med school, any job is a great job.

Even if it’s being the high school janitor.

The day starts at the ass-crack of dawn, the sky still dark. Hardly anyone will be in the school, and his job begins here. He’ll clean up stale un-flushed faeces. Fix up the insides of the toilet bowl backing, ensuring smooth, proper, flushing mechanism – so that no student claims he didn’t flush because it was spoilt. Wipe off the appalling cream-coloured stains across walls of the corner bathroom stall in the boys’ toilet. Restock the toilet paper. Empty and cleans twenty sets of six sanitary bins per level.

By seven-twenty, students will start to stream in. The squeaky clean floor will get slightly marred. Joshua will rush to erect mustard-coloured stands that scream “Caution! Wet Floor” at the entrances of toilets he’s not done with.

But human nature is bound to repeat itself. Someone will go in anyway. Someone will fall. Someone with muddy shoes will spread ugly streaks of dirt across the tiled floor. When assembly starts and when the kids clear out, he’ll mop that part up again.

“Same shit, different day,” he mutters when he re-mops up the communal area in the boys bathroom on the level where freshmen classrooms are located. He laughs to himself when he realises he _is_ essentially dealing with the same _shit_ everyday, but of course, no one hears. It’s a lonely job. His only friend he’s made on campus is the fifty-six year old gardener who tells him urban legends about a haunted bathroom on the sixth floor and about the locked storage room near the band room where some guy supposedly died. It’s nice, really, talking to him, but if Mr Kwon’s going to retell the same stories he’s heard of as a high-schooler every time they meet, it’s bound to get exhausting.

 

 

 

 

The air from the girls’ toilet is musty with the smell of cigarette smoke, and it’s not really his shift yet – it starts at two fifteen. But Joshua heads to the fifth floor bathroom anyway to check on the pipe leak he’d tried to fix with cheap replacement parts and duct tape. Before he enters, the sound of girls talking travels to the entrance, and he stops, almost ready to back off and wait.

Against his better judgement, he stays, his cleaning supplies leaning against the wall, his head against the pink “Female” signboard.

“What, you thought sneaking up on my ex would give you some kind of place in my society? I’m sure Hoseok’s just keeping it in. If only he knew what a worthless bitch you were, Seo Jisoo.” From the corners of his eyes, he makes out a girl whose skirt’s exactly the length needed to be acceptable.

_Wow, tea. Could I be bothered, though?_ Being a janitor is a thankless job. Joshua knows better than to barge into a bitching session amongst female high school seniors. This is where they touch up their illegal makeup. Complain about others. Panic about blood stains on their skirts.

“He’s just my desk partner, Sojung. I didn’t ask for it,” someone pleads.

“Uh-huh. That’s why we saw you staying back to talk to our homeroom teacher last week. Telling him you can’t afford glasses so you needed to move to the front,” a girl with a higher-pitched voice chips in. Her prefect badge glints in the dim bathroom lights. “Look at this lying bitch. You know what happens when you lie, right?”

“I really can’t afford glasses, but I didn’t want to sit with Hoseok either,” the same pleading voice from before says, voice getting softer.

“Oh, so _now_ you think you deserve better than Hoseok? You’re so funny. If you can’t afford those glasses, why don’t you steal it? Don’t act like you haven’t done it before. Bet you’ve got something up your sleeves.”

“Sojung _please_ , I’ve got nothing. Just let me go today, I’ve got a project submission today and I’ll send you my essay tonight okay-“

“And would you learn your lesson? You wouldn’t. Dumbasses like Jung Hoseok only tolerate you because they haven’t realised what you are. A fucking piece of trash that tries to steal everything because she knows she’ll never have them on her own. He knows nothing. You think you can make friends with him? His stupidity is why I broke up with him. But newsflash: he’s not as dumb as you are. Soon, he’ll realise. So, roll up your sleeves.”

One month and one paycheck into his job, and Joshua’s used to hearing insults floating around the girls’ bathrooms. It’s the survival of the fittest, the food chain of youngsters, and only those at the top, and those too irrelevant to be detected under the radar of the former survive. But honestly, he hasn’t been around long enough to hear _this_ amount of misplaced malice.

“Still struggling? Joohyun, help me out. We have to punish those in the wrong. Roll up her sleeves. Don’t scream, Jisoo.”

Something sparks from the bottom of his belly – you know the gut instinct that tells you when shit’s about to happen? Yeah, it hits him hard and he stumbles into the door of the girls’ bathroom, steadying himself against a mop, adjusting his janitors’ cap. The girls look up and roll their eyes, and the one backed up against the wall looks visibly shaken but relieved.

There’s one moment of awkward silence where the only sound comes from the dripping sound of water from the broken pipe. And then, the two girls with prefect badges drag the other up, smile plastered on their faces as they pass him, their hands pulling down the dishevelled sleeve on the latter’s right shoulder.

Joshua thinks he sees a glimpse of angry, red dots and similar shaped scars on her shoulder– her, being the girl who he presumes to be “the worthless bitch, Seo Jisoo”. He thinks he sees Sojung throw something into the toilet bowl in the third cubicle before leaving.

(He also thinks he heard Joohyun saying, “what a fucking pity,” as the trio leaves.)

High school drama is sure one hell of a mess. He knows of boys being beat up in the bathroom. Boys gaming in the bathroom. Boys talking about girls and boobs and hot teachers in the bathroom. But until he took on the job, he’s never known what goes on in the female bathroom.

When he gets to the toilet bowl of the third cubicle, the evidence is already gone, the last seconds of the toilet flushing being the only thing left in its wake.

This, is the first time he meets Seo Jisoo.

 

 

 

 

This time, it’s actually his shift. It’s the fifth and final shift of the day in fact, and it’s eight at night.

Technically, students are supposed to have cleared out. He goes into the sixth floor bathroom whistling, until he realises that he isn’t alone.

Someone’s crying. Something. Is it a someone?

He feels the misery in the tears and it’s tearing him apart. A chill runs down his spine – this is the supposedly haunted bathroom, and no one ever uses it but daredevils and kids who know nothing about the story surrounding the bathroom.

According to the story passed down generation after generation, sans the changes made to the storyline after every year, the bathroom was where a high school student threatened his then-girlfriend to abort their accidental baby, and when she refused, he stabbed her in the womb _. You know, the typical story concocted by teachers to scare students from pre-marital sex._ Joshua had never believed it throughout high-school, and one year after graduation, he doesn’t either. Not when he cleans this bathroom every afternoon.

 

Today, he may just change his mind.

“H-hello?”

The crying stops.

“Are you okay?”

No response.

 

The gardener’s voice rings in his head on repeat. “ _Rumor has it that if you come to the toilet at midnight, you can hear the cries of the teenage mother. And if you’re a guy, and she thinks you’re her ex-boyfriend slash murderer, well, I’ll pray for you safety.”_ It’s not even midnight but paranoia’s seeping into his veins.

Against his better judgement, again, he stays. His cleaning supplies abandoned at the sink, his feet taking him towards the end cubicle where the door’s locked.

He knocks on the door. The person inside sniffles.

“I’m not your boyfriend!” he blurts out in fear, and Joshua wants to die, here and now.

“As I I’d ever have one,” the person locked inside mutters, syllables barely audible. Her voice is familiar, yet he can’t pinpoint where he’s heard it. He almost feels bad for sighing in relief at the fact that it’s a _someone_ that’s crying, not a ghost.

“Well, uh, school’s closing now, it’s better that you come out.”

He can’t comfort others. Oh god.

The door unlocks. “Sorry ‘bout that,” a girl comes out of the cubicle, backpack slung on her left shoulder, jacket slipping off her right. Even in the dark, he makes out red, blood stains that cause the fabric of her white blouse to stick against her right shoulder.

It’s this moment that he realises that she’s the Seo Jisoo the girls from class 6A were talking about this afternoon. The one that Kim Sojung allegedly caught stealing from convenience stores after school. The one who copied her history essay from Bae Joohyun.  The one who  purposely burnt them with hot soup when they were at a restaurant.

The one that Sojung and Joohyun cornered in the fifth floor bathroom last week.

She hurriedly tries to leave but Joshua catches her by the forearm.

“What happened to your shoulders?”

She resists in his grip, shouting “It’s none of your business!” as she’s released, running away from the bathroom and bounding down the stairs.

 

And maybe she’s right. He’s left standing there, one hand on the door handle, one hand dangling limply by his side. He doesn’t know why he cares. He’s heard tons of kids bitching about others, he’s seen kids punching others in the bathrooms but he’s never cared. Never asked. He’s only reported them, or sent them out, nothing more, nothing less.

He’s just a janitor. But even as a janitor, Jisoo’s story as per Joohyun and Sojung’s concoction doesn’t add up. And those marks and blood stains on Jisoo’s body don’t look like petty self-harm either.

 

 

_Who cares ,_ he thinks, as he scrubs the floor with brute force, the plastic end of the mop scratching against the tiles, like he’d stub his curiosity about Seo Jisoo like this. He’d better finish up soon to make it on time for his second job at the clinic tonight.

 

 

 

 

 

“Sorry, I couldn’t buy you food today,” Jisoo says as she closes the door and locks it. The door rattles behind her, and Chan grunts from his corner of their one-room flat.

“It’s alright, noona. I ate food in school. Why are you home so early though? I thought you were supposed to be working at Daejang Restaurant?”

Jisoo looks down and pretends to take a call. Chan rolls his eyes, turning back to his video game on his phone.

“You done with your homework, Chan?”

He shrugs.

“You gotta do it though. Don’t end up being a loser like me. Get a good job. Get rich,” she nudges him, urging him to roll over so she’d be able to lie down on their shared, battered mattress.

“You’re not a loser, noona,” he says, probably empty words uttered to pacify her as his eyes are trained on his digital troops marching across his phone screen, shit blowing up in the background. A notification from pussy_destroyer017 pops up on screen; “FUK THEM N00BS UP YUS”

… and Jisoo laughs; hollow, empty, meaningless. She turns to the side of the mattress where her back’s against Chan and her eyes stare into the opposite wall that’s probably a few square feet away but it feels like a thousand miles. The peeling plaster stuck pathetically to the wall sums up her emotional state – dead, shrivelled up, hopeless but still trying to cling on – and failing. One day, her body, her mind, they’ll fail her. One day they’ll give up.

Almost the whole of their cohort knows about her stealing the microwavable food packs home – they were for her and Chan, and yes, she’s a thief. Was a thief. It was before she had a job – before she lost it again today.

She had been working at the restaurant but Joohyun and Sojung had found out about it. Jisoo had tried to ignore their existence since they hadn’t ordered in almost twenty minutes. But when she passed their table, hands carrying hot soup for the regular customer two seats away, Sojung had stuck her foot out.

It’s not that hard to imagine what happens next.

Initially, her boss had kept wanted to keep her. But a phone call after school, just before she was going to set out for work, told her otherwise – the man telling her that feedback from anonymous diners informed him about her past as an iljin, causing him to have no choice but to fire her. Of course, figuring out the identities of the anonymous diners weren’t an issue.

This was the start of her world crumbling before her eyes.

 

 

Now, as Jisoo lies in bed, her right shoulder dangling out of the mattress to prevent blood stains on the bed sheet, her tears drying on her cheeks, she closes her eyes. To shut out the world. To shut out the voices.  To take away the sight of her own self-destruction. To pretend that the train-wreck rotting in a one-room flat, struggling to fend for her younger brother in a reality he doesn’t deserve, is not her, not Seo Jisoo, the scum of the earth.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> she knows he has good intentions.  
> but sometimes, good intentions aren't enough. (she knows this, too.)

He finds her again the next day in the third cubicle of the sixth floor toilet, hiding there during lunch period.

No one else is brave enough or has enough time to go to this toilet, which 1) makes the toilet really clean, and 2) means that it’s just him and her now. It’s yesterday all over again.

He knows it’s her when he sees her trademark neon orange shoelaces untied and splayed out to the point that it’s peeking out from under the wall that separates the second and third cubicle while he’s cleaning the toilet. There’s a burning from the pits of his abdomen that’s stirring him, that’s telling him that he’s gotta ask her. _About what?_ He doesn’t know. He just knows he has to say something.

Step one; he goes to wash his hands. It’s basic etiquette; and for some reason, getting down and dirty the past month, coupled with having to go to an ultra-sterile clinic for his nightjob’s caused him to develop a cleanliness streak resembling mild OCD.

Joshua knocks on the door after drying his hands. “You’re Jisoo, right?”

“Wow, even the janitor knows about me? Gee, I’m famous,” he hears her go again. This time, her voice is void of emotion, flat and dead, like a frayed wire at the end of itself. There are no hiccups, no sniffles. He doesn’t know if she’s been crying like she did yesterday, but if she did, it was soundless.

“Life, uh,” Joshua sweats nervously, gripping onto his mop, “Life sucks huh?”

“Tell me something new, ahjussi.”

“Well, uh, you wanna talk about life? And stuff.”

“I’m just an eighteen year old feeling self-important. Woe is me. I’m screwed up, ahjussi. Maybe “and stuff” is a better topic of discussion,” Jisoo sighs behind bathroom walls, trying to sound like she’s joking, like it’s not a big deal.

“Well, uhm. Can “and stuff” be about your shoulder? I want to talk about your shoulder,” Joshua suggests, on his tippy toes against the cubicle door for no reason at all.

Cue the uncomfortable pause.

“As in, I don’t mean it that way! As in, your injury.”

The door unlocks. She steps out, her eyes swollen, her cheeks red. “I’m not doing self-harm, if that’s what you’re interested in. See, no need to report me to the counsellor, ahjussi-”

Her words die in her mouth as she peers up to look at his face beneath the cap, the top of her head meeting his eyes.

“ _You’re_ a janitor?”

“Yes?”

“Aren’t you like, two years my senior?”

“How old are you again, kid?”

“Eighteen. Twelfth grade. Senior. Holy shit, why are you mopping bathroom floors at your alma mater when you could have the world? Weren’t you on the Dean’s List or something?”

“Yes, but I failed my scholarship applications. For uh, reasons. Dang, kid, was I that much of a legend when I left high school?”

Jisoo wipes at her tears and rubs her eyes blearily to peer at him again. “Wait, I’m so lost. Does this mean that you’re not an ahjussi?”

“Uhh, guess not,” he says after pondering, letting his guard down and Jisoo sees this as her chance at escape.

“Great. I’ll be going now, thanks for the trivia!” Jisoo tries to brush past him once again, and déjà vu floods Joshua’s senses.

This time, he doesn’t let her go.

 

“You sure you wanna go back? It’s homeroom next period for your class.”

“Who said I was going back there?”

“Then where are you going?”

“Uh, fifth floor toilets.”

“What for? You can pee here in peace. I’ll back off!”

Jisoo looks down, sighing like it’s the defining moment where she volunteers as a tribute. He’s not quite sure, when her face is this unreadable, clouded with so many undistinguishable emotions at the same time. “I need to meet my friends there.”

“Your friends? You’re going to meet them with your shoulder like this? In this state?”

 “Hell no, I know I look like shit but-” she’s blubbering like she’s making a choice while wedged between a rock and a hard place, and he seizes the opportunity.

“Okay, then come with me.”

He smiles as he takes her unwilling wrist in hand and leads her downstairs to the janitor’s closet, which smells of Febreeze and Clorox and new toilet paper.

“Why, why am I here?” Jisoo moans, her hand still in his. Joshua takes out a first aid kit from _nowhere_ and she eyes it warily.

“Can I roll up your sleeve,” he asks softly, peeking out from under his unbelievably long eyelashes, and Jisoo thinks the world kind of stops in its motion, her worries thrown out of the window. Her mouth says no but she nods and _what the hell is happening they told me I wasn’t supposed to let anyone see it;_

He does it anyway, slowly, gingerly, biting back a gasp at the horrifying land field of blistery spots on her upper forearm. They’re red and raw and there’s pus mixed with blood, which doesn’t stir a gut reaction from him after a month of being a janitor. “What happened?”

Jisoo feels so exposed like this.

“It looks like burns. Burns upon burns. Burns upon half-closed wounds, burns upon unmarred skin. Who did this to you?”

She remains tight-lipped but a furious tear escapes from the side of her eye. Joshua thinks he already knows who they are.

“This isn’t right, Jisoo. No matter what kind of rumors are circulating, how true they are or how badly your name gets dragged in the sand, this is wrong. You have to tell somebody about this, you’re getting used and _abused_.”

She shakes her head. “No one’s going to believe it anyway.”

“I will.”

She scoffs. “You what?”

“I’ll believe you, even when no one else will,” Joshua says, suddenly feeling awfully self-conscious.

“That’s nice. I, uh, I appreciate the sentiment. Thanks,” Jisoo says, patience evidently running low, and under-tide of emotion rising beneath her demeanour, and she gets up. She’s not supposed to feel like this – she has things to do, places to go. “But you see, I have to attend a counselling session and I’ve got to go to the Dean’s office to beg for a second chance at the scholarship you failed to get.”

He sinks to his knees before her, tearing open the sleeve of the alcohol swab, inadvertently blocking her escape once more. Jisoo winces, her mind reminding her of reality and its course of future, certain events. _It’s no use, I’ll have to take away the bandage after that. I can’t let them see._

“I don’t, I don’t get it,” he’s shaking his head, possibly sounding more disappointed in her than she is. She doesn’t know what gives him the right to feel like this; he knows nothing. “Why are you fine with them using you, destroying you, you could tell someone?”

“I don’t have anyone,” she hisses as he dabs the swab across the festering wounds.

 

Joshua wants to protest, but yet he realises that he’s in no position to say anything – he’s just a janitor, at the end of the day. They sit in silence, aside from her hisses and grunts when he cleans and bandages the wounds with his limited, store-bought first aid kid.

“If you don’t mind me asking… why did you fall short of the SNU Med course scholarship criteria?”  
Jisoo isn’t looking him the the eyes but she’s _talking_ and that matters more, so he grins sunnily.

“Well, I took on two part-time jobs when I was in the final year of senior high, like you are. I studied well in grade eleven but the next year, my dad’s lung collapsed due to smoking – which is why you kids should never smoke, okay, it burns holes in your body and in your pockets - and my baby brother was born. With five kids and a medical bill along with my dad’s unemployment, well, we had to hustle. I gave up on it.”

“Why are you so, happy about this?”

“Happy? Of course I wasn’t happy. Why’d you think I punched my basketball captain when he roasted me on the court for missing the match that was our qualifying round? I’m not here to play the “I had it worse than you” because I’m sure you’re going through so much more, but hey, my dad survived? And he’s currently 2 years and 7 months smoke-free!”

Jisoo doesn’t know how to respond to this pure, cheeriness from the guy that’s paid to clean up after their shit. She looks at him smiling and her stomach tightens with ugly, unneeded rage, and she _hates_ how he’s happy, living like this. She thinks she’d feel better if he said poverty was causing him to wallow in misery – like it caused her; if he said morals come second when survivals came first. The guy doesn’t even sound like he’s _struggling,_ and her train of bitter thoughts horrify her. Even if he’s said that he was an angsty teen, she feels the contentment radiating from his hands and from his muscled arms and from his eyes, warm and dripping with unwarranted concern.

Eventually, she settles in the chair, bitter and resigned. It wouldn’t hurt to tell a janitor. _But why would he care?_

“Uh, anyway,” the janitor says, tightening the bandage over her shoulder lightly, “don’t smoke, kid. “

“I, I don’t smoke.”

“But you always smell like-“ And this is when his hands freeze in their motion; wheels turning to a click in his head. This is when it hits him and _oh,_

_Oh no._

“You don’t smoke,” he states.

Joshua’s hands flit to her shoulder and he uncovers the bandage, biting his lips. “You don’t smoke,” he breathes again. It sends small puffs of air over the multitude of singular, circular blisters and somehow, she just feels empty. It doesn’t hurt.

Their eyes meet, and she knows. She knows that he knows what they are.

“They’re cigarette burns, aren’t they? Those girls, they do that to you?”

She hangs her head. “Bad karma. I’m full of it.”

Suddenly, from outside the closet doors, they hear all too familiar voices.

“Where’s that Seo Jisoo? Still hiding in the toilets like the pussy she is, now that everyone knows her true colours?”

“Come out, come out wherever you are! You can kiss that shitty scholarship goodbye, now that Mr Kim knows about your pathetic past. Wake up; no one cares if you’re pitiful. No one wants a thief on their list.”

She hears Sojung call out and she knows it’s time. She’s supposed to meet them there. Show herself. Become the scapegoat, and watch every single one of her classmates roast her till she has no more dignity. And then, when the show’s over, they’ll let her go. Joohyun and Sojung promised – they’ll let her rot in peace, steal food and survive on financial assistance package deals. In peace. That was the important part, to Jisoo – no more toilet meetings, no more ridicule, no more unnecessary torment. In the face of this, what was dignity? A mere trade-off. _I have to make a move soon._

“You’ve got nothing now,” a third voice joins in, and then a fourth, followed by a whole lot of others. “Don’t pick on her, the poor rat’s probably trying to steal food from the cafeteria or something. We’ve checked the bathrooms, she’s not there.”

“She’s going to miss the math test next period though. What if she played truant?”

“Who cares if she misses the math test, it’s better without her. All this while I thought she was a smartass screwing up the bell curve, but now that we all know she copied from Joohyun, I don’t know what to believe in.”  
“Seo Jisoo’s harmless until you get to know her,” Sojung’s voice rings out amongst the rest of her classmates gathered outside the fifth floor bathroom, and Jisoo gets up from the chair while Joshua sits cross-legged on the floor, inevitably listening to the conversation outside.

“But I thought she always followed you and Joohyun around?”

“Yeah, we were tolerating her because the teacher told us to, being prefects and all, but the moment she knew that we caught her stealing at the convenience store multiple times, she turned ugly. You all know what happened, how I almost got burnt badly.”

 _Burn in hell, bitch,_ Jisoo mutters a little too loudly, and Joshua’s hand snakes around her head to cover her mouth, their bodies too close for comfort.

“Did you hear something?” Someone calls out and Jisoo struggles in his chokehold of sorts, ready to show herself to them, to start Act One of whatever Joohyun asked her to do; Joshua pats her back to calm her erratic heartbeat, his eyes sending a message he hopes she’d get; _not here, not now._

“I don’t know, I didn’t hear anything. If she’s hiding, I don’t think she’ll come out on her own accord.”

“Maybe we should throw cheese onto the floor. Or something. I mean, a rat trap is meant for a rat, right?”

They roar in laughter, their footsteps gathering in a rumble – they’re giving up, they’re going back to class.

“Hey Jisoo, you sure you’re not coming out?

Jisoo fights Joshua, injured arms surprisingly strong enough to push him away and pin him against the wall with her left hand, her right reaching for the door handle of the janitor’s closet-

“I fucking swear, I keep hearing noises from the janitor’s closet,” some guy says just as she turns the handle, the sound of it squeaking sending Joshua a mental note to oil it with WD-40 later. Both of them probably stop breathing at once.

“What the hell would Seo Jisoo do in there anyway, Hanbin? Make out? Steal mops? Janitor’s closet, what a joke. Let’s go.”

When the last of the footsteps trail out of hearing range, they both sigh – out of relief, or because they both held their breath? He doesn’t know.

“Why didn’t you let me go?” she hits repeatedly him as he raises his hands in surrender.

“It wasn’t the right time! They were gathered out there to crucify you, you think you’d live through that?”

“I had to come out anyway! You already know what they’ll do to me if I don’t. I’m bruising Sojung and Joohyun’s ego – they even brought the whole fucking class! I’ve got nothing now. I’m turning myself in.”

He holds up a mop up diagonally – like those “NO ENTRY” signs to keep her from banging on his chest. “Look, Jisoo, you don’t have nothing. You just have nothing to lose now.”

And he sees it. The spark of a different kind of light in her eyes.

She’s fighting him for all the wrong reasons, but her grip loosens, and her fists drop to her sides.

“I, I don’t even know who you are. “ Her resolve against him weakens, and her resolve against the rest of the world hardens, strengthens, solidifies. He thinks he sees the start of a smile twitch at the corner of her lips.

“Joshua Hong, 20, former star-forward of Daejeon Warriors, now a cleaning the shit of the school where I _used_ to shit, also works night shifts at 24-hour paediatric clinics. Wassup?”

His _wassup_ comes out weird and overly-Snoop Dogg –sounding, but it’s okay. She’s not laughing but she’s not fighting him anymore.

Jisoo decides to change the game plan now. It’s futile fighting him when he’s the reincarnation of a sunflower, when he thinks he can redeem her, when he’s this…( her mind struggles to find a word for it and settles for…) _nice._ All she can do now is to gently shake him off – to tell him that she’s a waste of time, that she has to face the music and that’s inevitable. That she doesn’t need a saviour, she just needs to kiss the feet of the people she hates just once more – and then she’ll make do.

She doesn’t need optimism. She doesn’t need to rain on his happy parade either.

Jisoo just needs to tell him that she’s not worth it. He’ll understand. _I hope._

“How do you know I’m not trash? That I’m not just as bad, or worse, as they make me out to be?”

“I-” he starts and she puts a finger to his lips insistently. “Don’t say that you trust me. You and I know that’s bullshit, you can’t possibly just trust me.”

“I wasn’t going to say that,” he begins, his lips moving while her finger’s still on it, causing Jisoo to withdraw her finger like she’s been scalded. The sense of Joshua’s lips against her fingertips burn and bleed life into her flesh and she looks at him like she’s offended as she struggles to find any surface to wipe the trace of him off, eventually settling for the wall. Joshua’s still talking – he won’t shut up. “I was going to say, I don’t know, because I honestly don’t.”

“Then why? Why are you doing this? You think you’re doing me a favour – me, a stranger, a loser? What if I said I was fine living like this; you think I can afford to _care_ about my pride at this point?”

Jisoo takes two steps forward, almost like she’s taunting for a fight. Joshua takes two steps back and she thinks she’s won. But then he opens his mouth, he laughs incredulously and pats her damn head.  … _And all hope is lost._

“You talk like you’re dangerous. It’s funny you know; that you’re talking about _saving face_ to a janitor. Amazing.”

 _Amazing._ She wants to wipe that smile off his pretty face, she wants to tell him that it’s no use.

“Okay, you win,” Jisoo drawls, planning her next course of action, “but I _really_ have no time for inspirational speeches. I’m sure you understand.”

Joshua’s shaking his head, disappointed. “Are you going back to them?”

Jisoo can feel it from where she stands and it’s _killing_ her.   _I didn’t ask for the guilt. I didn’t ask for Joshua Hong. I didn’t need saving._

“I, uh, I have class.”  
She pushes the door of the janitor closet open, and Joshua rolls his eyes.

“You’re gonna get eaten alive, you know?” he calls out across the hallway, like it’s a _bad_ thing, like she hasn’t been before, and Jisoo’s literally running away, running towards her downfall but it’s like a pathetic instinct of hers, to cater to Joohyun and Sojung’s whims and fancies because in a dog-eat-dog world she was this close to dying and never surfacing again. _And now I have a chance to break away – not like I have much of a choice, anyway._

Jisoo doesn’t dare to look back at Joshua, the sad sigh etched on his near-godly face that looks too out of place for his occupation, leaning on the wall in his ugly overalls, adjusting the cap.

“Really, kid, you’re just going to go on like this?”

She can hear him, and she really doesn’t want to dash his hopes of helping people, of improving lives and all that jazz. It sounds _good_ honestly, living freely, unshackled against the will of people you hate, but it’s all but a hazy dream that she can’t ever reach.

 

It’s only when she’s gone around the bend that finds Jisoo panting as she leans against the wall, panting, hands trembling as she takes out her phone from her pocket.

 

_joohyun     1:25pm_

_U FUCKING SNAKE YOU MISSED IT_

_on purpose? Really? Sojung is mad now_

_you think you can run away from being publicly roasted like you deserve, huh. I’m up for connect the dots… you know where. We just need more dots to complete the picture._

_You     1:45pm_

_I’m sorry!! I was held up earlier._

_Please give me one more chance_

_I swear I’ll show the class I’ll do it_

_joohyun     1:46_

_amazing. Held up where? Crying like the ugly pissbitch you are?_

_You     1:46pm_

_Look, joohyun, I swear I wasn’t!_

_joohyun     1:46_

_You still have the nerve to argue, what a joke_

_Sure looks like we’re going to play connect the dots in the bathroom_

Jisoo closes her eyes and tries not to visualise the searing pain of a lit cigarette bud against her now-bandaged wounds. She tries not to imagine the Sojung being pissed at her when she realises it’s been treated.

_You     1:46pm_

_I’m sorry_

_I didn’t mean to argue!_

_I’ll do whatever it takes_

_You’re going to let me go after this right?_

_Joohyun     1:57_

_Still want to bargain? Ugh_

_We’ll see. It depends on your behaviour. Sojung graciously allowed you one more chance._

_Classroom. In two minutes. Have an excuse prepared._

 

Jisoo almost cries in relief. She runs to find the nearest bin, and in a sweeping action, rips off whatever visible part of the bandage left and covers it with her uniform sleeve. The pain is blinding but she’s still running, running, running, her phone in hand, struggling to type with one finger.

_I’m sorry, Joshua. I want to live too. But first, I have to survive._

 

_You     1:57pm_

_I’ll be there_


End file.
